Heat in the home

[Cugel]

hahaha - just wait till the Gulf Stream falters...

I've got a 5mm thick wetsuit, me. It heats you in two ways: getting it on (or off, for that matter) generates an enormous amount of heat & sweat, measurable by the amount of red in your face as you struggle and also by the level of profanity. Once you're in it, its very warm ... but they aren't called wet suits for nothing.

When I were a student, I once spent a whole week inside a down sleeping bag, as the farmhouse several of us rented was useless at keeping winter at bay. It's surprising what you can do whilst shuffling about in your down sleeping bag. It can be a shock coming out of it, mind ... even if the temperature's gone up to 36 degrees C.

Cugel

[simonineaston]

I recall seeing in the New Year in a cottage up in the Glyders somewhere, and discovering that it was warmer outside than in the cavernous main room, with its high ceiling and usless wood fire. We carried the table and chairs out and ate a full dinner alfresco...

[al_yrpal]

Talking to a couple of ladies that had heat pumps installed. Both complain of cold houses and no response from the installers. Asking them if they had increased size radiators installed produced blank looks. Seems like cowboys are installing these things.

Stroud is a hole in the ground, no wonder smoke hangs about on still evenings.

Al

[mjr]

I was thinking more of heat pumps which left to their default settings will use as much or more electricity than direct heating because of our damp air, when typically for 1 unit of energy in, there should be 3 out.

Are there any? Most problems I've read about have been due to installers overriding the default heat pump settings to do dodgy things like run the radiators hotter, which is presumably to avoid calls complaining that the new system doesn't make the radiators hot enough.

I was thinking of this post https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... 924#p16924 - and had a neighbour who experienced pretty much the same issues.

Sadly, they don't identify the heat pump, so it's unverifiable. There's also other stuff wrong there which makes me wonder if the installer used a setup crib sheet that included those settings.

[mjr]

Talking to a couple of ladies that had heat pumps installed. Both complain of cold houses and no response from the installers. Asking them if they had increased size radiators installed produced blank looks. Seems like cowboys are installing these things.

Definitely some cowboys out there! Also, I've been told many experienced installers left the UK just as the last grant scheme entered its final push because German firms offered better pay and conditions, closer to homes in Scandinavia and Poland, with less residency bureaucracy. So the last wave of installations and ongoing support both got worse.

There are heat pumps which can reuse existing radiators (at lower performance) but even then, the controls should either be easy to adjust or smart enough to keep the house warm (with a energy consumption cap if wanted).

[Cugel]

Talking to a couple of ladies that had heat pumps installed. Both complain of cold houses and no response from the installers. Asking them if they had increased size radiators installed produced blank looks. Seems like cowboys are installing these things.

Al

Cowboys? Shurely shome mishtake and you mean, "The clever wealth-generating unregulated entrepreneurs of Great Brutain"?

Cugel

[francovendee]

Talking to a couple of ladies that had heat pumps installed. Both complain of cold houses and no response from the installers. Asking them if they had increased size radiators installed produced blank looks. Seems like cowboys are installing these things.

Stroud is a hole in the ground, no wonder smoke hangs about on still evenings.

Al

A friend here had a grant to install it. She previously heated with stored gas.
They used the same radiators and I asked was she warm enough in the winter? She said ' sort of'.They kept the house warm by running the heating for longer. Overall she didn't think she saved any money.

[Nearholmer]

But, did it reduce consumption of finite resources and pollution? If it did, bingo!

[francovendee]

As she is in her 80's and on a low income her reason to change wasn't about pollution.
Not quite Bingo for her although it may help her great grandchild.

[ANTONISH]

But, did it reduce consumption of finite resources and pollution? If it did, bingo!

She could have achieved that by turning off her heating altogether - from what I've read and heard about air source heat pumps their performance is not what some exponents suggest - bingo! indeed.

Even industry sources suggest that the overall energy output is often no more than 200% of input.
One industry source suggested that you will need to use an immersion heater to get the hot water you need because the heat pump produces water at a much lower temperature than a gas boiler.
That suggests that at current prices the cost of the electrical energy used will be higher than the cost of gas used for hot water and heating at current prices.

I'd like to see a real life comparison between an air source heat pump and a gas boiler producing the same heating and hot water outcomes for identical dwellings.
I would also like to see the cost of modifying the heating system - increasing radiator size larger bore pipes etc and upgrading the insulation of a dwelling to the point where the level of house temperature produced by an air source heat pump matches that of a gas fired boiler.
I am in no doubt that the cost will not be within the reach of the majority of the population.

Meanwhile I'm quite happy with my oil fired boiler (1000 litres a year) and my multifuel stove ( used only during the colder weather burning smokeless fuel - 225kg last winter)

[pwa]

I was watching the Channel 4's Grand Designs programme last night, and although I have always found it entertaining, it still doesn't spend much time, if any, analysing how energy efficient a new build home is, or isn't. I always end up wondering how the double height living room performs as a sitting area when everyone knows that heat rises and the coldest part of the room will be a relatively short distance above the heated floor, with the warmest area up where the cobwebs will be.

[Nearholmer]

So much TV is still dedicated to aspirational consumption with no regard to sustainability that you don’t surprise me, but, a practical tip if your house does have high ceilings, or a stairwell that acts as a chimney for heat:

If you install a small duct, even something 100mm square cross section, with a very tiny fan like the one from a PC, and use that to draw air downwards, it can massively improve air-mixing and comfort.

Now a question: at what external ambient temperature (and humidity factors-in too), do correspondents start thinking about turning on some indoor heating?

I ask because the weather seems very funereal today, and I did begin to think about putting the heating on later.

[francovendee]

We use a wood burning stove and never light it until the end of October.

[mjr]

Even industry sources suggest that the overall energy output is often no more than 200% of input.
One industry source suggested that you will need to use an immersion heater to get the hot water you need because the heat pump produces water at a much lower temperature than a gas boiler.
That suggests that at current prices the cost of the electrical energy used will be higher than the cost of gas used for hot water and heating at current prices.

Those are wide of the mark, so I guess the "industry" is "gas boiler plumbers". On its worst day (including a control system error running it hotter than needed), our CH+HW ASHP has done more than 200%, and the immersion is only used for anti-legionnaires cycles in deep winter when it's cheaper than running the HP that hot. The immersion is fitted mostly to be able to use excess solar generation.

A HP produces hot water at lower temperature than a typical UK burner boiler, 55˚c not 80, but that is because both it's more efficient and also most UK boilers are set for speed not efficiency. There are now lots of youtube videos advising boiler users to turn down the water temperature to save money.

At current prices, mains gas is a cheaper way to heat, but that won't last once electricity prices are unlinked from gas prices like they should be. Heat pumps are already cheaper heat than oil.

I'd like to see a real life comparison between an air source heat pump and a gas boiler producing the same heating and hot water outcomes for identical dwellings.

There will be few because you would probably not run the two exactly the same.

I would also like to see the cost of modifying the heating system - increasing radiator size larger bore pipes etc and upgrading the insulation of a dwelling to the point where the level of house temperature produced by an air source heat pump matches that of a gas fired boiler.
I am in no doubt that the cost will not be within the reach of the majority of the population.

The cost will be both beyond most (there is a cost of living crisis) and not that much compared to the heat pump. Plumbing changes of maybe 20-25% of the cost of the pump, with pipes only needing replacement if uninsulated microbore was widespread.

Meanwhile I'm quite happy with my oil fired boiler (1000 litres a year) and my multifuel stove ( used only during the colder weather burning smokeless fuel - 225kg last winter)

And you feel no guilt over the pollution?

[mjr]

Now a question: at what external ambient temperature (and humidity factors-in too), do correspondents start thinking about turning on some indoor heating?

I care about the internal temperature more than external but I let the controller decide and only actually turn it off when away, which also turns the hot water off until a few hours before we return.

So in theory, the heating was on all summer and simply decided not to output any heat.